Taiwan Today

There are three main currents in Chinese phi­losophy: Confucianism, Taoism and Zen Bud­dhism. The spirit of joy runs through them all, although each has its own mode of joy. Gen­erally speaking, the Confucian joy springs from the love of learning, the harmony of human rela­tions and the realization of one's manhood or humanity; the Taoist joy consists in untrammeled freedom and detachment from things mundane, in keeping oneself in tune and harmony with Nature, in self-realization through selflessness; and the joy of Zen is found in seeing one's true nature and thereby attaining enlightenment, in the pleas­ant surprise of self-discovery, in the harmonization of the this-worldly with the other-worldly.

You will see that the idea of harmony is the keynote of all the three types of joy. Where there is harmony, there is joy.

Nothing can be more delightful than to study different philosophies of joy, to rejoice with each of them and finally try to harmonize them all.

CONFUCIAN JOY

The very beginning of the Analects of Con­fucius radiates an atmosphere of joy. It sets the tone to the whole Confucian philosophy of life. It opens like this:

The Master said: Is it not a true delight to learn and to practice constantly what one has learned? Is it not a real joy to see men of kindred spirit gathered from distant places? Is it not characteristic of the gentleman not to be saddened even when his qualities are not recognized by the world?

Here we find the joy of learning, the joy of fellowship and the joy of the perfect development of one's personality without regard to recognition by the world.

Confucius described himself as "a man who is so eagerly absorbed in learning and teaching as to forget his meals, and finds such joy therein as to forget all his sorrows, being quite oblivious of the coming on of old age."

Of all his pupils, Confucius had the greatest love for Yen Hui, whom he never tired of praising. "How good is Hui!" he said, "With a single bowl of rice and a single ladle of cabbage soup, living in a miserable alley. Other people could not have borne such distress, but Hui has never lost his spirit of joy." This shows that Confucius admired people whose joy comes from within and not from external circumstances of life. In fact, he once said of himself, "With coarse food to eat, plain water to drink, and a bent arm for a pillow -­ even in such a state one can still be happy. As for riches and honors obtained through improper means, they are like fleeting clouds to me."

From the writings of Mencius, who was the ablest exponent of the teachings of Confucius, we can have a glimpse of the secret source of the Confucian joy. To Mencius, human nature is essentially good, for the simple reason that it is ordained of Heaven. Therefore, our highest joy consists in the fulfillment of our nature as man. To quote his words, "What belongs to the essential nature of man cannot be increased by the largeness of his sphere of action, nor diminished by the poverty and obscurity of his condition. For external things do not belong to his essential nature, which consists in humanity, justice, pro­priety and wisdom. These are rooted in his very heart; they manifest themselves as a mild harmony and radiant cheerfulness in the countenance, and a rich fullness in the back. Their influence spreads to the four limbs, which know how to obey their biddings without being told."

Mencius further remarked: "All things are complete within us. There is no greater joy than on self-examination to find ourselves true to our nature." Our nature being Heaven-ordained, to cultivate it carefully and develop it to the full is the way to serve Heaven. From this we can see that Confucian humanism is not without its metaphysical and religious foundations.

The beautiful thing about Confucian humanism is that it is at once so intense and so broad. Nothing that is of interest to man as man is alien to it. It does not frown upon any essentially human feelings, affections, desires and appetites; it only insists that they should conform to the ideal of harmony. Confucianism seeks harmony in human relations, and when it expresses itself in poetry, it sheds a certain fragrance of sympathy that warms the cockles of your heart. In the Book of Songs, in which Confucius took delight, there are love-poems of the best sort. Let me quote an ode called "Wind and Rain" which sings of the joy of reunion of husband and wife after a long absence:

Cold is the wind, chill the rain.
The cock crows kikeriki.
Now that I have seen my love,
Peace has come back to me.

The wind whistles, the rain drizzles.
The cock crows kukeriku.
Now that I have seen my love,
My spirits are kindled anew.

The wind and the rain darken the day.
The cock ceases not to crow.
Now that I have seen my love,
My joy continues to grow.

To my mind, this lovely poem embodies a noble philosophy of love. People in love can be happy in spite of their adverse conditions. As a Chinese proverb has it, "So long as man and wife love each other, what if they were beggars to­gether?"

Let me quote a song of courtship:

She threw a quince to me;
In requital I gave her a bright girdle-gem.
No, it will not requite her,
But I will love her for ever and ever.

She threw a peach to me;
In requital I gave her a bright greenstone.
No, this will not requite her,
But I will love her for ever and ever.

She threw a plum to me;
In requital I gave her a bright jet-stone.
No, this will not requite her,
But I will love her for ever and ever.

This again presents a beautiful ideal. Love does not count in terms of material gifts. Love can only be repaid by love.

On the whole, it may be said that the Con­fucians are ethically and practically minded, and that the main source of their joy lies in the faithful performance of their duties in human relations. Tseng Shen, one of the greatest pupils of Confu­cius, once said, "Every day I examine myself on three points. In planning for others, have I failed in conscientiousness? In dealing with my friends, have I been wanting il1 sincerity? In learning, have I failed to practice what my Master has taught me? "

Tseng Shen was not a highly gifted man, but he plodded through life with the utmost caution and effort and became the recognized transmitter of the Master's teachings. Only on his deathbed did he feel relieved. He summoned his pupils and said to them, "Free my feet, free my hands. I have lived, as the Song says:

In fear and trembling,
With caution and care,
As though standing on the brink of a chasm,
As though treading on thin ice.

But now, my dear boys, I feel that whatever may betide I have got through safely." You can imagine what a moment of solid joy he experienced then.

Confucius used to say that Tseng Shen was "mentally slow." Yet, by dint of sheer earnestness and unflagging perseverance, he managed to realize his manhood at the end of his life. His rugged personality is like a mountain, and has a beauty of its own. He often reminds me of St. Peter among the disciples of Christ.

It was unfortunate that Yen Hui should have died before Confucius. From what Confucius and others said of him, we may be sure that he knew well the joy of Wisdom, from which moral actions flow spontaneously. The secret of Yen Hui's greatness is revealed in what Tseng Shen said reminiscently about him: "Clever, yet not ashamed to consult those less clever than himself; richly gifted, yet not ashamed to consult those with few gifts; having, yet seeming not to have; full, yet seeming empty; offended against, yet never reck­oning - long ago I had a friend whose ways were such as this." It would seem that in the makeup of Yen Hui, the Confucian devotion to moral life was united to a contemplativeness characteristic of Taoism.

In its highest reaches, Confucianism attains the vision of oneness of mankind, so that it sees "the whole world as one family with China as a member." In this state, the walls between the self and the others crumble down, and one be­ comes so big-hearted as "to regard the talents of others as his own and rejoice in the wisdom of others as if his own mouth had uttered it." This is exactly what Goethe had in mind when he wrote:

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
And in their pleasures takes joy, as though, 'twere his own.

Only such a man can "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep," as St Paul would have us do.

Now, it is easy to see that it is a great joy to rejoice with those who rejoice, but we may ask if it is also a joy to weep. The answer must be in the affirmative if we follow the reasoning of the great neo-Confucian philosopher, Wang Yang-ming. Once a pupil of his asked him, saying, "You said that 'joy is characteristic of the original substance of the mind.' When one's parent dies and one cries sorrowfully, is this joy still present? " Wang Yang-ming replied: "There is real joy only if the son has cried bitterly. If not, there won't be any joy. Joy means that in spite of crying, one's mind is at peace. The original substance of the mind has not been perturbed." From this it is clear that the Confucian joy springs from doing sincerely what we ought to do, and so there is real joy in weeping with those who weep.

THE TAOIST JOY

The Taoist vision is even more far-reaching than that of the Confucian. If the Confucian sees the oneness of mankind, the Taoist sees the oneness of all creation. If the Confucian finds his joy in the harmony of human relations, the Taoist finds his joy in the harmony of the individ­ual with the Cosmos. As the Taoists are mystics, it is hard to present their subtle insights and fol­low their tantalizing paradoxes. But perhaps Chuang Tzu, the greatest Taoist after Lao Tzu, has presented the essence of the Taoist vision when he declared: "The Cosmos and I were born together; and all things and I are one." This fundamental insight furnishes the key to all his musings, some of which are truly amusing. It is also the wellspring of Taoist joy.

You have heard Confucius say that riches and honors improperly obtained were so many fleeting clouds to him. The Taoist seems to go a step further. To him all riches and honors, whether properly or improperly obtained, are worth noth­ing. As Chuang Tzu puts it, the man of the Tao "lets the gold lie in the hill and the pearls in the deep; he considers not property or money to be any gain; he keeps aloof from riches and honors; he rejoices not in long life, and grieves not for early death; he does not account prosperity a glory, nor is ashamed of indigence; he would not grasp at. the gain of the whole world to be held as his private portion; he would not desire to rule over the whole world as his own distinction. His distinction is in understanding that all things belong to the same treasury, and that life and death are but two phases of the same process."

The whole outlook is very much like that which Hamlet attributes to Horatio when he says:

...for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and bless'd are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co­mingled

That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
Who is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, aye, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

Lao Tzu would certainly have looked upon Horatio as a man after his own heart. For Lao Tzu, too, could take fortune's buffets and rewards with equal thanks. As he put it:

I am kind to the kind;
I am also kind to the unkind:
For Virtue is kind.

I am faithful to the faithful;
I am also faithful to the unfaithful:
For Virtue is faithful.

Like Shakespeare, Lao Tzu saw in life an interpenetration, of opposites. As he said, "Bad fortune is what good fortune leans on; good fortune is what bad fortune hides in." This is exactly what Shakespeare saw: "The web of life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together." Since everything tends to "become the opposite of itself," it stands to reason that one must not be elated over one's good fortune nor depressed by ill fortune. This is the secret of Taoist equanimity and serene joy. In the words of Chuang Tzu, ''The man of the Tao is happy in prosperity and also happy in adversity, for the simple reason that he does not stake his happiness upon the fortunes."

If you understand that "all things belong to the same treasury," the treasury of Nature, and if you are one with Nature, then the sun is yours, the moon is yours, the stars are yours, the whole universe is yours. It all depends upon how you look at it. The whole teaching of Taoism may be summed up in a couple of paradoxes, which the Christian mystic, St. John of the Cross, has uttered: "To possess everything, desire to possess nothing. To be everything, desire to be nothing." St. John did not have any acquaintance with Taoist literature. But the truth is that all mystics think alike and talk alike.

The joy of the Taoist is the joy of non­ attachment, of perfect freedom. If the Confucian joy is the joy of fullness, the Taoist joy is the joy of emptiness. The one comes from effort and action; the other springs from spontaneity and quiet contemplation. The one is human, the other cosmic. The one is like warm sunshine in a winter's day, the other is like cool showers in hot summer.

Taoism is the philosophy for artists and poets. Most Chinese poets nave drawn inspiration from it. Li Po is a typical Taoist poet. He sings:

What is life after all but a dream?
And why should such pother be made?
Better far to be tipsy, I deem,

And doze all day long in the shade.
When I wake and look out on the lawn, I hear midst the flowers a bird sing;
I ask, "Is it evening or dawn? "

The mango-bird whistles, "'Tis spring.'
Overpowered with the beautiful sight,
Another full goblet I pour,

And would sing till the moon rises bright ­
But soon I'm as drunk as before.

Like Omar Knayyam, Li Po sought to dull the edge of the pathos of life by means of phi­losophy and wine, and by returning to the bosom of Nature. Here is a lovely poem telling how he and his friends spent a beautiful evening:

We drank continuously and finished a hundred jugs,
Till our minds were rinsed clean of ageless sorrows.

An ideal night it was to engage in transcenden­tal talks,
For the clear moonlight would not let us go to bed.

Feeling drowsy at last, we slept in the open hills,
With the sky for blanket and the earth for pillow.

Another charming aspect of Taoism is that it realizes the importance of being a fool. Lao Tzu has painted an interesting picture of himself:

All men have enough and to spare:
I alone appear to possess nothing.
What a fool I am!
What a muddled mind I have!

All men are bright, bright:
I alone am dim, dim.
All men are sharp, sharp;
I alone am mum, mum.

Bland like the ocean,
Aimless like the wafting gale.
All men settle down in their grooves:
I alone remain stubbornly outside.

But wherein I differ most from others is
That I delight in feeding upon the Mother.

There is no better illustration of this humorous mood than the following poem by Hsin Ch'i-chi:

I do not expect to live much longer, being ill and old.
Every moment of time is worth a thousand pieces of gold.
In my life I have paid up my dues to the hills and brooks;
But there is no remedy against the lust of books.

I may be wise: I may be otherwise.
What if I fall? What if I rise?
Each of us has his unique face;

So let each keep his peculiar pace.
If I were to write an autobiography,
What a perennial fountain of laughter it would be!

Let me quote one more poem to illustrate the Taoist sense of universal comradeship:

The winter has gone and with it a dismal year.
Spring has come bringing fresh colors to all things.
Mountain flowers smile in the clear pools.
Perennial trees dance in the blue mist.

Bees and butterflies are alive with pleasure. Birds and fishes delight me with their happiness.

Oh the wondrous joy of endless comradeship:
From dusk to dawn I could not close my eyes.

This poem was written by Han Shan, a Bud­dhist by profession but it seems to be of Taoist inspiration. Anyway, Taoism and Buddhism seem at points to merge into each other.

In saying that the Taoists find their joy in the bosom of Nature, I must point out that their conception of Nature is far from purely naturalistic. To the Taoists, the ultimate source of Nature is Heaven and the Tao. Chuang Tzu said: "Human joy consists in being in harmony with men, while Heavenly joy consists in being in harmony with Heaven." It was precisely because he was in harmony with Heaven that he felt at home in Nature. In the last chapter of the Chuang Tzu, there is a masterful characterization of Chuang Tzu the man, probably by a disciple of his: "Being. in tune with the spirit of the universe, he was at peace with all creation. He did not set himself up as a judge of the rights and wrongs of mankind, but passed his life quietly in the world. Above, he played in the company of the Creator. Below, he made friends with those who had transcended life and death and moved beyond the realm of beginning and end."

But how did Chuang Tzu transcend life and death? He viewed life as a big dream and death as the great awakening. He wrote: "When a man is dreaming, he does not realize that he is dreaming. Sometimes he even dreams that he is awake and goes on to interpret the dream he has just had. Only when he awakes does he realize that it was all a dream. So, when the Great Awakening comes, one will realize that this life is a big dream. Yet fools consider themselves as awake, knowing for sure that 'this is the prince and that the shepherd!' Oh, what cocksureness! Confucius and yourself are both dreams; and I who say that you are dreams am likewise a dream."

Chuang Tzu was not a dreamy man. It was rather because he was more widely awake than most others that he perceived a Higher Reality than the reality of this life. To say that life is a dream is a very different thing from saying that life is an illusion. To Chuang Tzu, even dreams have a certain degree of reality, only not quite as real as our waking life. But compared with our Great Awakening, our waking life becomes a Big Dream. That even our dreams have a certain degree of reality is illustrated by the story of an interesting dream that Chuang Tzu had:

"Some time ago, Chuang Chou dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering freely hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly! The butterfly was conscious only of its hap­piness in its natural freedom, with no thought whatever of Chuang Chou. A little while later he awoke and found the same old Chuang Chou lying quietly in bed!"

But there is no knowing whether it was the Chuang Chou dreaming that he was a butterfly or whether it is now the butterfly dreaming that it is Chuang Chou. But since it is certain that Chuang Chou and the butterfly are two different things, this is a good instance of metempsychosis.

To Chuang Tzu, only when the Great Awaken­ing comes can we know the real truth about our life. His mind was so preoccupied with the pros­pect of the Great Awakening that on his deathbed he attached no importance at all to the burial of his body. Upon learning that his disciples were planning to give him a grand burial, he said to them, "I have heaven and earth for my coffin and its shell, the, sun and the moon for my twin­ jades, the stars for my pearls and jewels, and all our fellow-beings for my mourners. Are not my funeral paraphernalia amply provided for? What could you possibly add to them? " The disciples said, "We are afraid that the crows and kites would eat up our Master." "Well," replied the dying man, "above ground, my body will be food for the crows and kites; under the ground, it will be food for the mole-crickets and ants. Now you want to rob the one to fatten the other. What partiality!" He died, as he had lived, a free spirit.

There is a Taoist as well as a Confucian in the bosom of every man, although by temperament he is apt to be preponderantly the one or the other. But there can be no question that we need both of them to fill up the measure of our humanity. As Emerson wrote, "When the moun­tains begin to look unreal, the soul is in a high state, yet in an action of justice or charity things look solid again." In this he has thrown out a valuable hint .as to the desirability of combining Confucian action with Taoist contemplation.

When we hear the Sufi poet Sadi sing:

Those who indulge in God-worship
Get into ecstasy from the creaking of a water-wheel.

we are charmed, but we certainly must take care not to fall into ecstasy on a busy street. St. Paul seems to have presented a perfect balance of the Taoist and Confucian tendencies when he wrote to the Corinthians, "If we seemed out of our senses, it was for God; but if we are being reasonable now, it is for your sake." By the grace of God and by his own genius, St. Paul has suc­ceeded in transcending all and yet embracing all. When he says: "If I have all the eloquence of men and angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming and a cymbal clashing," he re­minds me of Confucius, who likewise had said, "If a man has no love, what has he to do with ceremony and music?" And he makes me think of the Taoist freedom and insouciance, when he wrote to the Philippians: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. " For I have learned to be self-sufficing in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to live humbly and I know how to live in abundance, I have been schooled to every place and every condition, to be filled and to be hungry, to have abundance and to suffer want. I can do all things in Him who strengthens me."

JOY IN ZEN BUDDHISM

Buddhism used to be looked upon in the West as a pessimistic and nihilist philosophy of life. This might have been true of the Hinayana school, certainly not of the Mahayana school, with its positive conception of Nirvana and its generous Bodhisattva ideal of working in the world and refusing to enter Nirvana before all beings are liberated. In joyfulness, Buddhism is second only to Christianity. The joy of the Bodhisattvas arises from bringing joy to others. Enlightened them­ selves, they desire to be instruments in enlightening others. Their spiritual atmosphere is strikingly akin to that of St. Francis, who prayed:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is resentment, forgiveness;

Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light.

Zen Buddhism inherited, of course, the gener­ous Mahayana impulse, with its vast mental hori­zons. But so far as the contents of its teaching and the mode of its thinking are concerned, it is essentially Chinese, being a vital attempt to rec­oncile Taoist Transcendentalism with Confucian Humanism. The great psychologist, Dr. C. G. Jung, was right when he said: "Zen is one of the most wonderful blossoms of the Chinese spirit, which was readily impregnated by the immense thought-world of Buddhism."

In one sense, Zen effected a tremendous revolution in Buddhism. The traditional Buddhist teaching is that the believers should rely on the Buddha, the Dharma or Law, and Sangha or the Community of monks. Hui-neng, the founder of the Chinese Zen school, teaches that they should rather rely on Enlightenment, Rightness and Purity. In truth, this is a doctrine of self-reliance. His teaching may be summed up briefly in his own words: "Within, keep the mind in perfect harmony with the self-nature; without, respect all other men. This is reliance on oneself." The important thing is to see directly into your self­-nature and be enlightened.

The joy of Zen, then, springs from being enlightened and bringing enlightenment to others. But the enlightenment, if it comes at all, comes unexpectedly, in a flash. You may prepare your­self for its coming by meditation and cultivating your moral life, but all your preparations merely set the stage for its coming, which cannot be compelled or predicted, for it is like the wind that blows where it wills. It comes like a thief or a robber, never like a guest who arrives in time in answer to your formal invitation. But when you catch the thief or robber, you find that he is really your best friend playing a prank on you.

The element of unexpectedness and casualness is a characteristic feature of instantaneous enlight­enment. This seems to be symbolically presented in a little poem by the Buddhist nun Mei-hua Ni:

I spent a whole day in search of Spring,
But I could find no trace of it,
Although my sandals were worn out walking
Through the misty hills.

On my return home, regaled by the fragrance
Of the plum-blossoms in my garden,
I suddenly saw Spring in full bloom
On the tender branches.

This shows that true enlightenment is to be found only at home. However, if there is no outing, there will be no return and no real ap­preciation of home. In this sense, Chuang Tzu's transcendental roamings are perhaps a necessary part of the whole process of returning home and finding oneself. As Lao Tzu says: "To be great is to go on; to go on is to be far; to be far is to return." When you look back from the moon to the earth, you realize that the earth is really a part of the heavens. The great use of the moon trip, therefore, is to evoke an intense yearning for your home. Likewise, Chuang Tzu's free excursion to the transcendental regions serves to arouse an irresistible desire to return home to the self-nature of man, which, according to Hui­-neng, "is so great that it contains all things." Hui-neng went to the extent of declaring that "All the Buddhas of the past, present and future ages and all the twelve parts of the Scriptures are immanent in the nature of man as part of its original endowment." This magnificent idea is evi­dently a development of Mencius' philosophy of human nature. When the neo-Confucian philoso­pher Lu Hsiang-shan said that "In learning, if we know the fundamentals, the Six Classics are but so many footnotes to our mind," he was obviously under the influence of Zen.

According to Ch'ing Yuan, a Zen master of the Sung period, there are two diseases to be avoided in the practice of Zen. "The first is to ride an ass in search of the very ass you are riding; the second is to ride the ass and refuse to dismount." It is easy to see the silliness of seeking the ass you are riding. As your attention is turned outwards, you will never look inside, and all your search will be so much ado about nothing. The kingdom of God is within you, but you seek it outside. There is no telling how many troubles in the world have had their origin in this wrong orientation.

The second disease is even more subtle and difficult to cure. This time, you are no longer seeking outside. You know that you are riding your own ass. You have already tasted an interior peace infinitely sweeter than any pleasures you can get from the external things. But the great danger is that you become so attached to it that you are bound to lose it altogether. This is what Ch'ing Yuan meant by "riding the ass and refusing to dismount." This disease is common to con­templative souls in all religions. In his Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton has uttered a salutary warning against precisely the same pitfall:

"Within the simplicity of this armed and walled and undivided interior peace is an infinite unction which, as soon as it is grasped, loses its savor. You must not try to reach out and possess it altogether. You must not touch it or try to seize it. "

There is nothing that you can claim, nothing that you can demand, nothing that you can take. And as soon as you try to take something as if it were your own, you lose your Eden.

In other words, joy is only the incidental effect of our self-discovery, but if we become attached to it, we would again lose our Self. So, Ch'ing Yuan's final counsel is: "Do not ride at all. For you yourself are the ass, and the whole world is the ass. You have no way to ride it. If you don't ride at all the whole world will be your play­ ground."

Now let me relate some concrete instances of enlightenment. One of the greatest masters of Zen was Ma-tsu Tao-i (709-788). Before he was enlightened, he was practicing sitting-in-meditation in a little cell in the neighborhood of a temple, where Nan-yueh Huai-jang (677-744) was the Abbot. Seeing Ma-tsu, the Abbot recognized him, by intuition to be a vessel of the Dharma. So he visited him in his cell, asking, "In practicing sitting-in-meditation, what does your Reverence aspire to attain?" "To attain Buddhahood!" was the answer. The Abbot then took up a piece of brick and began to grind it against a rock in front of Ma-tsu's cell. After some moments, Ma-tsu became curious and asked, "What are you grinding it for?" "I want to grind it into a mirror," replied the Abbot. Greatly amused, Ma-tsu said, "How can you hope to grind a piece of brick into a mirror?" The Abbot fired back, "If I cannot grind a brick into a mirror, how can you sit yourself into a Buddha?" "What must I do then?" Ma-tsu inquired. The Abbot replied, "Take the case of an ox-cart. If the cart does not move, do you whip the cars, or do you whip the ox?" Ma-tsu remained silent. The Abbot continued: "In learning sitting-in-meditation, do you aspire to learn the sitting Zen, or do you aspire to imitate the sitting Buddha? If the former, Zen does not consist in sitting up or lying down. If the latter the Buddha has no fixed postures. The Dharma goes on forever, and never abides in anything. You must not therefore be attached to, nor abandon, any particular phase of it. To insist on sitting yourself into Buddha is to kill the Buddha. To be attached to the sitting posture is to fail to comprehend the essential principle." We are told that when Ma-tsu heard these words, he felt as though he were drinking the most exquisite nectar. This is the joy of enlightenment.

Now, to be enlightened is to be awakened, but awakened to what? To our True Self! This will be plain from what Ma-tsu said to a newcomer by the name of Ta-chu Hui-hai. When Hui-hai visited Ma-tsu for the first time, the latter asked him where be came from. Hui-hai replied that he carne from the Ta-yün Temple in Yueh-chou. Then Ma-tsu asked, "What do you come here for?" "I have come to seek the Buddha-dharma," was the answer. "I have here not a thing to give you," said Ma-tsu, "What Buddha-dharma can you expect to learn from me? Why do you ignore the treasure of your own house and wander so far away from home?" Greatly mystified, Hui-hai asked, "What is your humble servant's treasure?" "None other than the one who is questioning me now is your treasure! " Ma-tsu replied, "All things are complete in it, with nothing lacking. You can use it freely and its resources are inexhaustible. What is the use of seeking in the exterior? " At these words Hui-hai was instantaneously enlightened.

In short, so long as you do not realize that your treasure is within you and so long as you seek it outside, you will never be happy. On the other hand, as Mencius had said, "All things are complete in us. There is no greater joy than upon self-examination to find ourselves true to our nature." This is a profound Confucian insight embodied in the teaching of Zen. But the graphic manner and ingenious tactics of inducing enlighten­ment are entirely original with Zen.

Here is how Ma-tsu converted another disciple by the name of Wu-yeh. Wu-yeh originally be­ longed to the Vinaya school, versed in liturgy and scriptural learning. At his first visit, Ma-tsu, im­pressed by his towering physical stature and sonorous voice, remarked, "What a magnificent temple of Buddha! Only there is no Buddha in it!" Wu-yeh thereupon knelt down courteously and said, "The literature of the Three Vehicles I have roughly studied and understood. However, I have heard about the doctrine taught by the School of Zen that this very mind itself is Buddha. This is truly beyond the comprehension of my mind." Ma-tsu said, "Just this mind that does not comprehend is the very mind that is Buddha, and there is nothing else." Still unenlightened, Wu-yeh asked some other questions which seemed to Ma-tsu quite irrelevant. So he said to him, "Your Reverence is still busied about nothing. Suppose you retire for the moment and come back some other time." Just as Wu-yeh was starting to leave, Ma-tsu called after him, "Your Rever­ence! " As Wu-yeh turned back his head, Ma-tsu asked, "What is it?" At this question Wu-yeh was jerked into enlightenment. He had discovered himself.

Our whole life is a great romance, the romance of discovering our True Self. Even the funda­mental moral precepts such as: Avoid all evil, pursue all good and purify your mind, are but preliminaries to the finding and being of oneself. Chuang Tzu summed up this supreme romance of life in a beautiful passage:

"The moral virtues of humanity and justice are like the wayside inns that the sage kings of old have set up for wayfarers to lodge for a night. They are not for you to occupy permanently. If you are found to tarry too long therein, you will be made to pay heavily for it. The perfect men of old borrowed their way through humanity and lodged in justice for a night, on their way to roam in the transcendental regions, picnicking on the field of simplicity, and finally settling in their home garden not rented from another. Tran­scendency is perfect freedom. Simplicity makes for perfect health and vigor. Your garden not being rented from another, you are not liable to be ejected. The ancients called this the romance of hunting for the Real."

Our whole life is, then, a pilgrimage from the unreal to the Real. No romance can be more meaningful and thrilling than this. Because both the goal and the process are romantic, there is nothing in life which is not romantic. That is why the Zen masters have so often quoted a significant line from a popular love-poem:

With her, even the prose of life becomes poetry.

Many years ago, Justice Holmes wrote me that one must "face the disagreeable" and learn "to tackle the unromantic in life with resolution to make it romantic." I submit that his outlook is very near to that of Taoism and Zen, especially the latter. For to the Zen masters, Tao is nothing but the ordinary mind, and nothing is more wonderful than ordinary life. Ma-tsu once said, "The phenomenal is identical with the transcen­dent, and the born is none other than the unborn. If you have a thorough realization of this idea, you can live your daily life, wear your clothes, eat your meals, rear and nourish your inner womb of holiness and pass your time as befitting your conditions and the tides of human affairs." The same philosophy is embodied in a poem by Ma­-tsu's outstanding lay disciple, Pang Yun:

In my daily life there are no chores other than
Those that happen to fall into my hands.
Nothing I choose, nothing I reject.
Nowhere is there ado, nowhere a slip.

You wish to know the emblems of my glory?
The mountains and hills without a speck of dust!
What is my magical power and spiritual ex­ercise?
Carrying water and gathering firewood!

A monk asked the master Ch'u-hui Chen-chi as he appeared for the first time as Abbot, "I hear that when Sakyamuni began his public life, golden lotus sprang from the earth. Today, at the inauguration of Your Reverence, what auspicious sign may we expect?" The new Abbot said, "I have just swept away the snow before the gate."

A novice once said to the master Chao-chou, "I am only newly admitted into this monastery, and I beseech you to teach and guide me in the way of Zen." The master asked, "Have you taken your breakfast?" "Yes, Master, I have." "Go wash your bowl," said the master. At these words, the novice experienced an instantaneous enlighten­ment.

Thus, Zen seems to go a step farther than Taoism. The latter is still more or less inclined to seek for the extraordinary, while the former finds the most extraordinary in the most ordinary. The truth is that Zen has assimilated the mystical insights of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and the moral intuitions of Confucius and Mencius and transmuted them into a living synthesis.

To Zen, the transcendent and the immanent are all of one piece. It aspires to arrive at the other shore by remaining on this shore. It has learned the lesson of detachment from Taoism, but carried it a step farther. As Hui-neng has said, "Externally, be detached from phenomena in the midst of phenomena; internally, be detached from the Void in midst of the Void." Thus, Zen transcends Taoism by insisting that we must be detached from detachment and return to the world of human relations. Hui-neng has highlighted this point in a gatha which is redolent of the Confucian morals:

If your mind is right and without bias,
What is the need of observing the sila?
If your conduct is upright,
What is the use of practicing dhyana?

To cultivate the virtue of gratitude,
Nothing is better than to love and serve your parents.
To practice justice and good faith,
Let superiors and inferiors be considerate to each other.

The virtue of courtesy and deference is shown
In the harmony between master and servant.
The effect of patience and long-suffering is shown
In the quieting down of all evils.

If you know how to bore into wood
So as to get sparks of fire,
Your life will be like a red lotus-flower
Growing unsullied from mire and mud.

Know that all effective medicines
Taste bitter in the mouth.
Remember that what is unpleasant to your ear
Must come from the mouth of a loyal friend.

Repentance and amendment are sure
To give birth to knowledge and wisdom;
While the defense of your shortcomings reveals
Only the lack of goodness in your heart.

In your daily life, make it a point
To do always what is beneficial to others.
The attainment of the Tao does not depend
Upon the mere giving of money.

Bodhi is to be found only in your mind;
Why waste your effort in seeking inner truth outside?
If you conduct yourself according to this gatha,
The Paradise of the West is right before your eyes.

This may be called performing the moral duties of our finite life with an eye to the Infinite.

One of the most frequently reiterated couplets in Chinese Zen literature is:

An eternity of endless Void:
A day of wind and moon.

The first line symbolizes the transcendent, while the second line symbolizes the immanent. But the two lines are to be taken together, for they are thoroughly interpenetrated with each other. Shan-neng, a Zen master of the Southern Sung, has given a meaningful comment upon the couplet. "Of course," he said, "we must not cling to the wind and moon of a day and ignore the eternal Void. Neither should we cling to the eternal Void and pay no attention to the wind and moon of the day."

Rightly understood, this couplet brings us to the dawn of creation by reminding us of the first quiverings of time in the womb of eternity. An infinite Void, utterly silent and still. In a split second there came life and motion, sound and color. No one knows how it happened. It is the mystery of mysteries. But the mere recognition that the mystery exists is enough to send any man of sensitive mind into an ecstasy of joy and wonder. For, can there be a more beautiful and soul-shaking experience than to catch ageless Silence breaking for the first time into song? More­ over, every day is the dawn of creation, for every day is unique and comes for the first time and the last. God is the God of the living, not of the dead.

The whole meaning of Zen is to evoke just this sense of the continuity and dialogue between Time and Eternity. When the mind is rightly conditioned, the most casual experience can be an occasion of enlightenment. An ancient monk was studying the Lotus Sutra. When he came upon the passage that "All the Dharmas are originally and essentially silent and void," he was beset with doubts. He pondered on it day and night, whether he was walking, resting, sitting or lying in bed; but the more he pondered, the more confused he became. On a certain Spring day, an oriole suddenly burst into song, and just as suddenly the monk's mind was opened to the light. He hit a gatha on the spot:

All the dharmas are from the very beginning
Essentially silent and void.
When Spring comes and the hundred flowers bloom,
The yellow oriole sings on the willow.

The sudden burst of song of the new oriole reminded him of the eternal Silence.

Similarly, a lay student of Zen was pondering a kung-an or mind-teaser in the toilet. Suddenly he heard the croak of a frog, and he was instantaneously awakened to Reality, as evidenced by the following lines he wrote on the occasion:

In a moonlit night on a Spring day,
The croak of a frog
Pierces through the whole cosmos and turns it
Into a single family.

Not only sounds, but also colors can be an occasion of enlightenment. One master came to his enlightenment on seeing the peach blossoms. "Ever since I saw the peach blossoms, I have had no more doubts," he used to say. Of course, he had seen peach blossoms previously to that happy occasion. But it was only then that he really saw them as they should be seen, that is, he saw them for the first time against the background of the eternal Void, as though they had just emerged from the Creator's Mind. On previous occasions, he had seen them vaguely as in a dream. But this time, as his inner spirit happened to be happily conditioned for enlightenment, the sight of the peach blossoms opened his eyes to the source of their existence and beauty, so that he saw them no longer as isolated objects, but as lively spurts from the fountainhead of the whole universe.

Some Zen masters have said that when a man is fully awakened, he can hear by his eye. The Psalmist was certainly such a man, who sang:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
And the firmament displays his art.
Day to day utters speech,
Night to night transmits knowledge.

We have seen that Chuang Tzu regarded death as the Great Awakening, which he also called the Great Return. For the Zen masters, the Great Awakening or Return must be achieved in life. That is to say, we must find our True Self while we are still living; and if we are identified with our True Self, which is beyond life and death, Nirvana or Eternal Life has practically begun for us here and now. Then we are already in a posi­tion to spend our Heaven in doing good on earth, to borrow an expression from St. Therese of Lisieux. In such a state, every season is a good season, and every day a good day, as Yün-men has declared. Wu-men has written a delightful poem, which I like to quote:

Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn its moon
Summer has its cooling breezes,
Winter its snow.

If you allow no idle concerns
To weigh on your heart,
Your whole life will be one
Perennial good season.

The great paradox is that only a man who has no concern for his life can truly taste the joy of life, and only the carefree can really take care of others.

This reminds me of Pope John XXIII. What made him so charming and so great? Was it not because he had lost himself in God? To him, "All days, like all months, equally belong to the Lord. Thus they are equally beautiful." On Christmas of 1962, he said, "I am entering my eighty-second year. Shall I finish it? Every day is a good day to be born, and every day is a good day to die." On the eve of his death, when he saw his friends weeping, he asked that the Magnificat or Mary's Song of Joy be chanted, saying, "Take courage! This is not the moment to weep! This is a moment of joy and glory." Comforting his Doctor, he said, "Dear Professor, don't be disturbed. My bags are always packed. When the moment to depart arrives, I won't lose any time." I submit that the Christian joy comprehends all the three types of joy that we have treated.

Let me remind you that we are living in an inconceivably great age. It is an age in which the East and the West have met face to face, demand­ing a fundamental harmonization. It is an age of unprecedented spiritual unrest. Material civiliza­tion has developed beyond our dreams. We have already landed on the moon, and we are heading for Mars. Our body has taken on wings, but our soul is still earthbound. As Henri Bergson puts it: "Now, in this body, distended out of all proportion, the soul remains what it was, too small to fill it, too weak to guide it. Hence the gap between the two. Hence the tremendous social, political and international problems which are just so many definitions of this gap, and which provoke so many chaotic and ineffectual efforts to fill it. What we need are new reserves of potential energy - moral energy this time." It is indeed ironic that in this space age, most young people feel that "the heart needs more room to breathe." But we have no reason to be pes­simistic. I for one have faith in humanity and believe that great as is the challenge we are confronted with, man's response to it will be cor­respondingly great. Furthermore, there are signs that scientific thought is maturing, so that instead of considering itself as hostile to religion, it becomes more and more conscious of being an ally or fellow pilgrim of faith. It is significant that one of the foremost scientists of our age, Einstein, should have expressed himself as follows:

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms ­ this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness."

It is no less significant that one of the heroes of Apollo 11 should have recited from the heights the verses of Psalm 8:

When I look at Thy heavens. the work of Thy fingers.
The moon and stars which Thou hast established:
What is man that Thou art mindful of him,
And the son of man that Thou dost care for him?

As to the cultural relations between the East and the West, it is not too much to say that they are in love with each other. On the one hand, all Orientals have fallen for the scientific civilization of the West. On the other hand, more and more Western intellectuals are attracted by the pro­fundities of the Far Eastern cultural and spiritual traditions. I may say that Confucianism, Taoism and Zen are studied with more zest and intellectual curiosity in the West than in the East. I know of a number of people in the West who have returned to Christianity by way of an excursion to the Far Eastern religions, whose mystical and moral insights have reminded them of the inexhaustible hidden treasures of the Gospel. It is high time for Chris­tians to absorb whatever is true, good and beautiful in all the living traditions of mankind, and bring them back to the Divine Logos or Tao, who en­lightens every man coming into the world. Finally, let us remember that the water pots must be filled with water before it can be turned into wine.